


Pirates!  In an Adventure with an Ex-Seminarian

by ariadnes_string



Category: Lewis (TV), Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Hathaway had joined the Pirate Crew instead of Oxford CID?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pirates!  In an Adventure with an Ex-Seminarian

**Author's Note:**

> Mild spoilers for the entire run of _Lewis_

The Extremely Tall Pirate stood silhouetted against the sky, his lavender stockings glowing faintly in the fading light. 

As the Pirate with the Scarf watched, the Extremely Tall Pirate beckoned the Pirate Captain to observe something off the starboard bow. 

“Just a little to your left, sir,” said the Extremely Tall Pirate. His fair head inclined towards the Pirate King’s more luxuriant locks as he directed the Pirate Captain’s gaze toward what must have been a particularly interesting basking shark.

“ _Captain_ , not _sir_ ,” muttered the Pirate with a Scarf, an unfamiliar emotion stirring in his breast. Beside him, Polly squawked in sympathy.

+

He had regarded the Extremely Tall Pirate skeptically from the first.

“Where did you find him?” he’d asked, when the Pirate Captain had returned with his newest discovery in tow. The clean-shaven man, in his tidy black clothes, was much better kempt than the usual recruit to the Pirate Crew. With his long chin and intelligent eyes, he’d looked more like the scion of some notable family having a lark at sea than the bedraggled misfits they usually took on.

“Why in the Rusty Scupper, of course,” the Pirate Captain had said. “You get all sorts in there. This one was almost crying into his ale, poor lad. He’s recently left a seminary. I believe he might be bit of a _Papist_.”

The Pirate Captain had lowered his voice on the last word. Despite having sailed companionably with Jews, Mohammedans, Sethians, Zoroastrians, and followers of the Great Manitou, he retained a conventional English horror of the Catholic Church.

“Kicked out, was he?” the Pirate with the Scarf had asked. “For the usual reasons?” He had not felt particularly sympathetic.

The Pirate Captain had looked blank. “He said it was for being too frivolous. Is that the usual reason?”

“Never mind,” the Pirate with a Scarf had sighed. “I’m sure it was very traumatic, whatever it was. But what induced you to bring him along?” 

“Why, there’s nothing more cheering than a Pirate Voyage,” proclaimed the Pirate Captain . “Fresh air! Exercise! Pillaging!”

“But what will he do? He looks no more able to swing a cutlass than to trim a bowline.”

“He shall be my clerk,” declared the Pirate Captain, with satisfaction. “All the best captains have clerks these days.”

“Your clerk?” the Pirate with a Scarf had repeated stupidly. “And what will that involve?”

“He shall write my letters, of course, and bring me coffee, and perhaps set my collection of treasure maps in order.”

It was then that the Pirate with a Scarf had felt a sinking sensation in his stomach, for it had long been his task to pen the Pirate Captain’s annual letter to his widowed mother, and to keep track of the unruly pile of maps.

As if sensing his discomfort, the Pirate Captain had clapped him heartily on the back. “It will leave you more time for beauties of Pirating, Number Two.”

+

Despite the misgivings of the Pirate with a Scarf, The Extremely Tall Pirate adapted quite well to Piratical Life. At first, it was true, he did not know larboard from starboard, nor how to tie any knots whatsoever. But he was a quick study, and between the very light duties of being the Pirate Captain’s clerk had soon learned to climb the rigging like a remarkably agile octopus.

His worst quality, in the Pirate with a Scarf’s opinion, turned out to be his predilection for literary allusions. Not that the Pirate with a Scarf had anything against poetry, as a rule. He himself had always found “The boy stood on the burning deck” handy for solemn situations, and “the dog it was who died” similarly useful for festive ones. 

But the Extremely Tall Pirate would occasionally look down at the wake of the ship and start intoning about “the wine dark sea,” when it was clear that the ocean looked nothing like any wine the Pirate with Scarf had ever come across. Or, when in a particularly effulgent mood, he would declaim:

_Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,_  
And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide,  
The exulting sense - the pulse's maddening play,  
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way? 

But if it gave the Pirate with a Scarf a qualm or two to see the Pirate Captain go soft-eyed in admiration for such displays of book-learning, and if he fought the occasional temptation to knock the tidy stack of treasure maps (now alphabetically arranged) onto the floor, he tried to remind himself that it was the betterment of the Pirate Crew that mattered, not his individual wishes.

Sometimes it worked.

+

After the assassination attempt, of course, everything changed.

Pirate-on-pirate pillage was not the way of the Pirate Crew. But the _Cross-Eyed Cathy_ fired upon them first, and it was even less their way to turn from a challenge. The Pirate with a Scarf led the boarding party himself, a party which, against his better judgment, included the Extremely Tall Pirate. As predicted, the Extremely Tall Pirate did not know one end of a cutlass from another. More surprisingly, however, he turned out to be a dab hand with a dueling pistol, taking out the rival commander with a neat shot between the eyes.

After watching their leader fall, the Cross-Eyed Cathies abandoned ship with abandon. It was pirate tradition to let the sharks take what they would, but the Pirate Captain had always been a tender-hearted soul in this regard, and, as was his custom, they rounded up what prisoners they could to be set ashore without food or water at the nearest deserted island.

It was as the boarding party returned to their own ship that the strange thing occurred. 

One of the captured pirates, a wizened, swarthy fellow with a squint, peered at the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, who had taken up guard duties on the prisoners.

“Don’t I know you?” he said, in a thick and unidentifiable Eastern European accent.

Whereupon the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate fainted in a surprisingly un-piratical way.

While the Pirate with a Scarf looked around for a bucket of water to throw over his suffering shipmate, the Extremely Tall Pirate withdrew a vial of smelling salts from the pocket of his jacket and waved them under the nose of the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, who revived with a groan, only to faint again.

“Get him below,” the Pirate with a Scarf ordered the Extremely Tall Pirate. It was odd, to be sure; the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate was usually quite diligent in all his piratical duties; but he had no time to spare now for what was probably an attack of indigestion.

+

Later that evening, however, as the ship sailed in search of a suitably deserted island, the Pirate with a Scarf was awakened by a sharp tug on his hammock.

“ _Sshh_ ,” said the Extremely Tall Pirate, clapping a hand over his mouth before he could come fully awake. “I need to speak with you.”

He loomed over the hammock like an awkward vulture, and the Pirate with a Scarf felt a tiny shiver of fear as he nodded his head.

The Extremely Tall Pirate crouched down to a less threatening height and whispered, “The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate is not what he appears to be.”

The Pirate with a Scarf sat up with the distinct feeling that he knew what the Extremely Tall Pirate was about to say. “I knew it!”

“You knew the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate was an exiled Forty-Eighter?” said the Extremely Tall Pirate, seemingly impressed. “Then the Captain knows too, and all is well.” 

“No—I—I mean he—“ The Pirate with a Scarf felt obscurely flustered. “No—we didn’t know that.”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

“Nothing. Never mind. But it doesn’t matter—one’s past means nothing aboard a Pirate ship.”

“Yes—well. It turns out that the fellow we took off the _Cross-Eyed Cathy_ is a former compatriot of the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, from their Schleswiggian Liberationist Army days—Schmidt, his name is. The SLA is entirely underground these days, but Schmidt is threatening to expose our shipmate unless he assassinates the Pirate Captain, frees the prisoners and helps Schmidt take over the ship in the name of the Pan-Germanic Movement.”

The Pirate with a Scarf blinked. It all made no sense whatsoever. “But the Captain doesn’t care about the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate’s radical political past. He’s a member of the Pirate Crew now, and we protect our own. The Captain will feed this man Schmidt to the sharks at once. Or at least set him adrift on a raft.” 

“Thank goodness.” The Extremely Tall Pirate sighed in relief. “Will you come and talk to the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, then? He’s worked himself into rather a state, but he’ll listen to you—the whole ship trusts you without hesitation.”

“Do you really think so?” said the Pirate with a Scarf, flattered despite himself.

But before they could make further plans to avert catastrophe, a great din of stamping feet sounded on the deck above them.

“Out of my way,” said the Pirate Captain when they hurried above deck. Clad only in his nightshirt, he was chasing the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate across the boards, brandishing his cutlass. “This traitorous lubber has tried to kill me in my sleep, damn his eyes.”

Without discussion, the Extremely Tall Pirate and the Pirate with a Scarf acted in one accord. The Extremely Tall Pirate tackled the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, while the Pirate with a Scarf flung himself in the path of his Captain’s attack. 

It was a near thing, but the Captain managed to stay his blade.

“I can explain,” said the Pirate with a Scarf, as the Pirate Captain panted in confusion.

The Extremely Tall Pirate and the Pirate with a Scarf were better friends after that. The Pirate with a Scarf could hate no one who would put the Pirate Captain’s wellbeing above his own. At least, he couldn’t hate him very much.

+

It was shortly after the SLA incident that the Extremely Tall Pirate bade farewell to life at sea. The Pirate with a Scarf had seen it coming. The Extremely Tall Pirate spent long hours playing complicated airs on a borrowed mandolin, and paddled one of the lifeboats vigorously around and around the ship, simply for the exercise. His pleasure in ordering the treasure maps visibly diminished.

Nevertheless, they were all sad when the day came.

“But why?” asked the Pirate Captain as they stood at the aft bow looking out at Lisbon harbor, where the Extremely Tall Pirate was to disembark the next day. “You could go far as a Pirate. Promotion! Plunder! Pieces of eight! You might even have a Pirate Ship of your own someday.”

The Extremely Tall Pirate shook his head ruefully. “I need to move on. I need to do something where I’m actually helping people.”

“But Pirates help people,” said the Pirate Captain bemusedly. 

The Extremely Tall Pirate just smiled sadly and thanked him for the opportunity to see the world.

The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate threw himself at him and wept for a while before the Extremely Tall Pirate could pry himself free.

He exchanged a silent look of mutual respect with the Pirate with a Scarf and they all downed a last tankard of grog while the sun set over the wine dark sea.

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to the creators of _Lewis_ , Aardman Animation, Homer, Byron, Oliver Goldsmith, Felicia Hemans, Patrick O’Brian, Patty Hearst and the revolutionaries of 1848.


End file.
